


Take My Breath Because You Want to

by strangerdangerthings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Knows, Depressed Dean, Depression, Emotions, Human Castiel, Intimacy, Invisible Castiel, Kidnapping, Longing, M/M, Separation, Slow Burn, Smoking, Supportive Castiel, Supportive Sam, Telepathy, homosexuality issues, long term build up, mental health, praying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-26 19:42:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangerdangerthings/pseuds/strangerdangerthings
Summary: Dean loved Castiel. He always had. It’d always been too little and too much. He was suffocating. Dean was drowning in his dreams of the angel and he didn’t want it to stop, even though he wanted Castiel to save him at the same time. He wanted the angel to march into his room and give him the breath he so longed to take.





	1. Prologue

Dean hated Castiel. He hated his demeanor, of coldness and a usually blank face. He hated the way he only stood up straight, stiff as a board. Dean hated how his voice was so gruff and low because of the way he could almost feel the way speaking made Cas’s chest vibrate. Dean could feel the rumble deep in his own chest, making his heart seize slightly whenever the angel talked.

The thing Dean hated the most about Castiel was the way he was willing to give up everything for him. And Dean hated how deeply this thought plagued him. He would never truly admit any of these things out loud. Dean Winchester doesn’t ‘admit’ to things. He would never say any of this to anyone. He would keep this pushed away and hidden and locked into the part of his brain where his years in hell were stored. The part where Lisa and Ben were. Where everything remotely sensitive resided in his brain. That remained the most secure part of Dean, whenever Dean fucked up on a hunt and died and came back to life as always, his ‘feelings safe’ remained intact and everything went back to normal. He would never admit anything past “I love you,” and that was that.

Dean had never thought about guys this way before. Like he wouldn’t define himself as gay exactly, because he certainly could be happy in bed with a beautiful girl. It’s just this was all different. He was different. Cas was the only friend he managed to keep and he wasn’t just going to fuck that up either though so Dean just enjoyed those silent and discreet moments of staring at each other, thoughts entwined through their connected eyes. He let himself reflect countlessly over the times they had touched ‘platonically’. He would sit late at night and imagine Castiel next to him, not asleep, yet there. There would be nothing but silence and eye contact. It wasn’t erotic. Dean just couldn’t piece it together in the least. He didn’t care if Cas would have sex with him, even though he’d never let that happen, it wasn’t important. This feeling Dean had was nothing but intimacy. There were no words that could ever define how deeply and whole it felt. 

And Dean knew Castiel would let this happen. The angel would let Dean undress him, slowly and sensually releasing buttons and zippers until it was just the both of them, tangled together among linen sheets with their eyes closed and breathing synced. But at the same time, that wasn’t enough. If this were to ever occur, Dean would want to feel the angel making his own choices. He would need it to not be a situation completely controlled by himself.

Dean knew all of these standards and hurdles were setting him up for failure but it wasn’t like any of this was going to happen anyway.

Castiel didn’t live at the bunker. It puzzled the hunters as he was completely welcome to and they would miss his delightful conversation. Dean would be disinterested in most things if he couldn’t do them with Cas. He just sat next to Sam everyday, reading the ancient leather bound books. His mind was elsewhere however. As his eyes would impose upon an innocent word such as “weakness” or “multiplicity”, Castiel would be there. The blue-eyed man would stare at him through the inked pages.

When his wings made their telltale ruffle and he was suddenly in front of the hunters, the feeling of being watched dissipated and dissolved into his visible stare. 

“Dean? Sam?” The deepest voice the hunter had ever heard rang out.

“Cas.” He responded, carefully mellow, in tandem with Sam’s carefree chirp.

They’d discuss a case or a lead on so-and-so. But at the same time that Dean’s mind juggled new information and responsibilities, it juggled a singular thought.

Touch me.

Dean’d usually get up from the old cherrywood table they sat at to read and walk past Cas, letting his hand give him a seemingly-friendly pat on the angel’s shoulder.

Sometimes he’d be able to pull away and let it only be a second long moment where they were touching. But lately, it’s just been harder and harder to not let himself surrender those barriers. He would succumb to it every time. His rough and calloused hands would linger for moments on the blade of Cas’s shoulder. Castiel would do nothing in response. Why would he? Dean gave him no reason to read anything into those seldom moments. It was so deeply hidden and secret and intimate and Dean didn’t even know if he wanted to even let that change. 

The man would just accept this lingered moment of Dean’s satiation and move on without even a glance in his direction. 

But Dean was also afraid that Cas knew every thought flying through his head. He’d never kept anything from him besides this and the angel could be in the same room as him and Dean would never be able to actually see him if Castiel didn’t want to be seen. It was so alluring that Castiel could know everything, and if that was so, he showed no signs of it.

The hunter tried his best to not let himself end up alone with the angel. At first these feelings weren’t as intense like when they were still getting to know each other. As time has gone on, Dean couldn’t get Cas out of his mind. He was a plague of warmth, a disease of ever-tender thoughts. And it was like Dean had never experienced being attracted to someone before. It was like the man was a warm cabin in the middle of a tundra and Dean had been living in the cold until now. All he wanted to do was find himself inside the cabin. He wanted nothing more and he just couldn’t take the first step inside. He could see the blue-eyed man inside, staring back at him, but there the hunter stood, snow covered boots frozen to the doorway. The door was never closed but Dean wish it had been and he could see Castiel open it for him and invite him in. He wanted this.. whatever, to happen, if it did, because Cas wanted him. 

And that’s just where Dean stayed, frozen at Cas’s doorway.

He had a special room in the bunker. It wasn’t his own yet it reeked of Dean. It had nothing special on the walls and nothing was disorderly. The only thing Dean had decorated it with was an old print that his dad had kept from his old house. Dean found it in the trunk of the Impala one day, he had seen it for years among the weapons and ammo but thought nothing of it. 

The poster was of some old Clint Eastwood movie but it wasn’t really important what movie it was for. The name was faded and the aged ink was muddled in the shine that became less bright everyday. Dean hung it in the room because it reminded him how some things don’t seem, at surface value, to mean anything. It meant that things that stick around are important. It doesn’t matter what other people thought about that movie. His dad loved it and he kept that poster for a reason. Dean wouldn’t say the incriminating words of how he felt about Cas but, it was a secret metaphor to remind himself to never let himself fuck up with Cas. 

So that room held everything when Dean could no longer bare the weight of secrets. He would close the door behind him and revel in the scent of shame and self-hatred. He let his mask slip off and finally he was free. He was free from the burden of loving someone so much but being so helplessly drowning in that pool for the man he felt this for, he refused to ask to be saved from it. He wanted to keep drowning in it. He wanted to never be able to catch his breath. He loved when his ears filled with water and the only thing he could hear as his limbs stopped treading water were two heartbeats. 

Everything was confusing and a double edged sword. Every thought had malice and tenderness. Every soft sigh had a whimper of pain. Dean never wanted things to change but everything in him needed to breathe. His lungs burned for air but he reveled in his light-headed state of being completely consumed in intimacy.


	2. Indescribeable

Castiel had a routine that he would visit the Winchesters. He’d always come on Sundays, if possible, and if not then he would pop in as soon as he was available. But that was when he’d visit them.

He also would watch them. When he had betrayed them so many years ago, he had been ever in their presence. They had thought they were alone, just the two of them in the Impala. Castiel would be perched in the backseat of the car, eyes keen on Dean’s brooding hands, clenched around the riveted steering wheel. He’d lovingly sit as each one rose from dreams of terror and darkness and enter the main corridor of the bunker. 

He’d let his bright blue eyes search Dean’s stubbled chin for any remains of drool, signs of pleasant dreams and actual rest. They’d skim Sam’s forehead, muscles always wrung tightly in anxiety and worry, for smooth, relaxed skin.

He’d always come up fruitless. Because the Winchesters didn’t care about getting enough sleep to wash away the monstrosities they saw everyday. All they cared about, fundamentally, was letting the people that can’t protect themselves feel safe enough to sleep. The brothers always felt as if their time was owed to innocent people. Beer and open windows of the impala and Led Zeppelin cassette tapes were the only indulgences they would allow themselves to have on a regular basis.

Castiel hated that. He could feel the sickness and raggedness of their souls. He could see the tethers that remained of their sensitivities. He could see the dim shadow of what used to be a glaring light.

They just weren’t like other people.

And that’s why Castiel liked them so much. He could relate to not being human enough to do things with his own self interest. The concept of ‘Me’ was not easy to understand for the three of them. There was just a mission, and they were a team.

Sitting and watching like a specter over the brothers was the only thing Castiel had knowingly done for ‘Me.’ He’d never used the word ‘I’ in his head. He couldn’t. All he’d ever been taught was that angels are soldiers. They are the weapons of God and everything holy and that was it. There was no ‘angels having tea while awaiting commands from the archangels’ or ‘great angel architect constructs new entrances to personal heavens to update the drab hallways of heaven.’ As a race, there was no self interest in the least and pretty much everyone was okay with that. 

Except Castiel, Lucifer, and Gabriel. Lucifer and Gabriel had no problem doing things for themselves. Gabriel had self-purpose in everything he did. Every porno he cameoed in was a tribute or a ‘fuck you’ to the belief that angels have no right to do things for themselves.

Castiel was subtle. He didn’t do this for himself, or he wouldn’t admit it exactly, he did this for the brothers. Or more specifically, Dean. 

When his remaining and few angel comrades would ask what he was up to, the blue-eyed angel would simply respond something like “Observing the Righteous Man,” or “Watching over the Winchesters, as was instructed by Father.” Castiel was one of only a select few angels who had even seen god, so the other angels wouldn’t ask a damn thing. If god said something, it would be to an archangel or Castiel. That was what they thought.

Indulging himself was becoming a less insane idea, as well. He had most of his original grace but there remained parts of himself that weren’t all “angel.”

He had to bathe for one and as strange as it was to make himself slippery and smell good while standing under a manmade waterfall, he tried to enjoy it. That grace was gone and there was no replacing it once it had been consumed. Speaking of smelling good, Castiel could smell. He remembered from when he was human, briefly, how the world always smelled sour and how food, unfortunately he didn’t acquire taste, smelled like sweet perfume of the women that would pass by him on the streets. He noticed that in the same way that each soul looked and felt different, they smelled unique as well.

Sam smelled like books. His parfum de Winchester depicted a scene of late night sessions in an archive, keenly interested in astronomy or etymology. It smelled of must, in a good way, of the history of the world. It smelled of papyrus pages and black coffee and newspaper.

But angels were different, each smelled of metal. They smelled like blood. It was unpleasant and suffocating and rank and maybe that was why he didn’t like being around them. He imagined meeting with the higher ups in the meeting room of Heaven and how much it smelled like a massacre. The walls appeared white and clean yet the room smelled of a slaughterhouse. It was awful. Castiel thought that maybe each unjust murder an angel committed contributed to the odor. Castiel didn’t want to think about how he smelled. 

But his favorite scent was Dean. He smelled, for some reason, of cigarettes. Castiel didn’t believe that Dean smoked tobacco but he just had a faint little plume of it coming off of him. He also smelled of the forest. It was his favorite place. He felt as at home there as he did with the brothers. It was green and loud, but not because of pollution or machines or humans, because of nature. He loved the way that the birds sung. It felt like they sung an endless song, each lull leading to another sweet melody of the Earth.   
Dean reeked of the forest. And lastly, he smelled like flowers, not in a sweet way exactly, it was just an odor of fragility. Of secrets and insecurity. It smelled like spring and hope and life. Castiel had noticed that all that babies smelled of was flowers. Young children usually lost the smell or others would overcome it but it stuck to Dean. Before he had walked into the barn that him and Dean met inside, he got a whiff of flowers. It had honestly put him off as he had never smelled before. When he walked into the barn, it was gone, but the angel never forgot.

He wanted to smell it up close. It was so pleasant and calming and he couldn’t possibly feel worry when his thoughts were consumed of nothing but content.

There was something completely unordinary about this man he had taken acquaintance with. He was one of the most faceted individuals Castiel had ever met. He was a Janus of sorts and as harsh and off-putting as he could be, he was so deeply full of emotions. He would never let them show unless he felt it was absolutely necessary for the people he was close to to hear. He was solitary yet his doors were open. He was a still river of grief and love for people he had lost. He let everything sit on the stove until it was burnt to a crisp. It was all a riddle or a long treacherous path to find the real Dean, which was hidden with every wall he could build to protect himself from getting hurt.

And Castiel wanted to find him. He just didn’t know how. 

He understood the concept of feelings and understood he was drawn to people for particular reasons. He felt anger for Lucifer and Michael and Raphael. He felt sadness for his fallen brothers and sisters. He felt empathy for the human world for being lied to. He felt love for Sam and Dean. He felt.

But he felt something different. Things beyond the words he knew. The angel didn’t know what to call it or how to figure it out but he knew it had to do with his interest in Dean. It was warm and a feeling of loyalty. It was emotions. And he didn’t know what to do exactly but to let it happen. He didn’t know if he liked it or not, but he knew it meant something important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bro feel free to comment or anything. they really motivate me and make my day. the plot is going to start next chapter so stay tuned. I’m going to update every other day. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday guaranteed. But the weekend is iffy, it depends on what is assigned in school and my mental health lmao. Also someone teach me how to get the italics to show up in the reader view. I use a lot of them and I think it can make it easier to understand.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! If ya find any typos, please comment where they are and I will fix them :). Leave feedback if you please <3


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